INTERVIEW: Petticoat

Please note that some of the additional information provided here by the journalist named below may not be accurate, so it should be treated with caution.

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22nd August 1970

Peter Wyngarde reveals ‘Why I like to be alone’

Anne Nightingale talks to Peter Wyngarde for Petticoat about his life and future – and particularly about that special charm he has that makes him a star with style…!

Anyway, a minute later, there he is at the front door in long black velvet trousers, matching waistcoat, startling hazel eyes, surprisingly freaked out long hair a bea-outiful patterned see-through voile shirt and a sun-tan that looks as though it had been beaten into his crease-line face. 

I almost expected him to enact an excerpt from his LP where he’s asking a girl into his abode: “Hello… do come in… what a beautiful dress… mmmm, what’s that perfume your wearing? don’t tell me, I know, I’ll whisper it.” 

Actually he says,”Would you like to sit down while I finish shaving,” and he’s got Terry walking on the radio 

But apart from these human touches, Peter Wyngarde lives in the most unreal elegance. His living room is filled with superb antiques, and the colours are so restrained that I have no idea now what they were. He has mellow leather chairs and a Chesterfield, pictures, ornaments, a Cromwellian clock, carved cabinets, well arrange flowers, table lighter and everything else you’d find on the set of a Noël Coward play. 

Even Peter Wyngarde’s dog is elegant… an Afghan hound called Yousef, but not any old Afghan Hound, he is a rare coffee colour especially bred in America. 

However, the effect is far from being look-how-live-now-I’m-a star. Peter Wyngarde has been perfecting the art of living since he was born. 

The elegant background helped. Born in the South of France, son of a British Diplomatic Corps officer father and a French mother, then educated privately in France, England and Switzerland. This should slot him fairly and squarely into an upper-class bracket, yet he is fighting off the society identity. 

“I don’t feel as if I belong to any strata of society,” he said, “I never did. I can be at home with anyone whether it’s at an ambassadorial dinner party, or with a gang of building labourers. Someone said that I am a mixture between a patrician and a… what’s the opposite of a patrician? Well, whatever it is, I’m that!” 

Then he admitted: “Mind you, people say I try to be one of the boys… and then I tried too hard.” 

Somehow it was a lot easier to imagine Peter Wyngarde at an ambassadorial party than looking bricks about on a building site. 

At that moment, an elderly lady admirer called through the window. “Oh how lovely, beautiful,” said Peter, as a bunch of Lilies of the Valley appeared at the end of an outstretched hand from the street below. Then he turned and looked around the room already filled with flowers. “Would you like them?” he asked me. “Well, if you’re sure…” I said, hoping the lady admirer wouldn’t see me leave the house with Peter Wyngarde’s flowers. 

So he went away to wrap them up. rummaging around his kitchen looking for a special piece of coloured cellophane paper he had in mind. “You shouldn’t go to all that trouble,” I called out. 

“I aim to please,” he said as he came back into the room. He was applying the remark to his personal relationships too. Peter Wyngarde has been married but won’t talk about it now. 

“I have an alone instinct,” he said. “Maybe my childhood has something to do with it.” He then went on calmly to explain how he had spent the war years in an internment camp without his parents and stranded from all other relatives in Shanghai. “It taught me to be self-reliant from a very early age. 

“I’m a very solitary person,” he said, “although I’m not self-sufficient, I like to be on my own. I ruminate a lot 

“Maybe I’m frightened of getting too close to people. I don’t want to get hurt and I don’t want to hurt other people. But I do think I need a permanent relationship. The trouble is that the sort of people who are attracted to me don’t seem to be all that intelligent. They start being petty and squabbling, and jealous. 

“What I need is someone who can be entirely independent and there aren’t that many around. 

“If I ever got married again, I’d want to live in a separate house to my wife then we could just see each other when we wanted to instead of all the time.” 

I said I couldn’t imagine very many women being happy with that situation. “No, they aren’t.” he said laughing – “that’s probably while I’m not married!” 

But the creation of Jason King has left him little time anyway to worry about his personal life. He travels all the time, meeting and getting involved with new people constantly. “I have very happy times,” he said, “then sometimes I think here I am with so-and-so, yet only five weeks ago I was really involved with someone different.” 

He’s in his middle 30s, “But I feel like 17. People are so obsessed with age nowadays. They don’t ask you what you do, they ask you how old you are. It’s so relative. I know people who are old at 25 and I’ve met people in Fiji of 60 or more who are incredibly young.” 

His thinking reflects contemporary modern young society, or maybe is a bit ahead of his time. “But I’ve always been like this,” he says, surprised that now he’s a name people should treat him as something different. “It’s the same with the clothes I wear. 

“I’ve always had people staring at me in restaurants because of my appearance. I always wore slim trousers, and boots. A little while ago, someone in Hollywood recognised me walking past a shop – he just remembered me from the clothes I wore when he knew me in London 10 years ago.” 

The distinctive appearance of Jason King is a well-planned piece of thinking, no showbiz accident. “I’m the sort of actor who becomes the part he plays,” Peter said. “When the part of Jason King was written originally, he was a quiet, donnish sort of chap and I knew then that if I played him like that I would become come home after acting out the part all day and I’d end up feeling about 70. So, Jason ended up being much more like me.” 

“His acting career began when he was 9, amusing himself and his internment camp mates with handmade puppets, Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. 

“But I had no thoughts of becoming an actor ’til much later. I tried law, but that was a disaster. But I suppose that was theatrical in a way. Then I went into advertising, and if I’d stayed in that I probably would have done pretty well. The partner I used to work with is a millionaire in America now. 

“The real acting began when I met a chap I knew outside a theatre in London. He was the only actor I’d ever met and I asked him what he was doing. He said he’d just been to an audition, and I wished him good luck with it, and then walked in myself! I had no idea what an audition was like, and just announced myself as Wyngarde and said I’d come about the part. 

“They asked me which part, and I just said well, er, THE part. Then they gave me the script to read, and I read all the parts. I thought that’s what you had to do in an audition! Then they asked me what experience I’d had, so I said Old Vic and Birmingham Repertory because those were the only companies had ever heard of. Oh, I told a lot of lies!” 

But he got the part and many more, always distinguishing him himself with the particular fair, however small the role. 

We discussed his views on theatre and film techniques ’til a buzzer on the gold watch Sammy Davis jnr. had given him reminded him about another appointment. 

So I clutched my Lilies of the Valley and left thankful that at last add meta star actor who lived up to his image.